Making Islamic Education Relevant For Today
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Channel: Abdullah Hakim Quick
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speakers discuss the challenges faced in Islam education, including practical leadership and continuous learning for children to manage challenges and achieve success. They stress the importance of learning about Islam and its cultural context, particularly in the context of learning about the rights of women in marriage. The speakers emphasize the need forvedicent education and practicality in learning about Islam, particularly in the context of learning the Quran and its verses. The importance of learning the language of Islam and its cultural implications is emphasized, along with the need for practicality in education for students to be modest and modest in their language.AI Generated Transcript ©
Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa sallahu wa salam ala carte Tamil and bi one more saline. Say that a Muhammad Ali he was happy as mine about my beloved brothers and sisters I greet you with the greeting words of paradise. Assalamu aleikum wa rahmatullah.
And I pray that these few moments that we spend can be a source of understanding and a source of inspiration for myself and you in the coming days. And we have reached a very critical point now in the development of the Islamic communities here in the West. And it is of great importance for those who are in leadership positions, especially for those who are involved in education, that we begin to look very seriously at our present condition, reflecting on the past and also projecting somewhat into the future
and inshallah with the help of Allah subhanaw taala.
We can stand up to the great challenges that we are facing, and especially in the coming millennium,
in this time change that we are making, and with the great
crises our society is facing. Allah subhanaw taala has told us in the Quran, are the Billahi min ash shaytani regime? Yeah, you have Latina Amina Taku la wa kulu Colin de de de
la mala como yo filicudi to new back home menu to learn how to Sula who pocket Fazal fosun azima Oh, you who believe have the consciousness of Allah and speak a straightforward word, he would repair your deeds, and forgive you of your sense. And wherever obeys Allah and His Messenger, has surely gained a mighty triumph. And so I want to speak to you today in this spirit of Poland studied.
And that is because I would not come all this way and go through the changes that I've been going through Toronto is getting cold. Now, by the way, coming to Miami is like a sauna bath. I wouldn't go to these changes just to say sweet nothings, or say something that would tickle your ears and make you feel good. We all need to feel good. But we need to deal with reality. And we need to be very honest and sincere and respectful with each other. When we are speaking about our conditions. In Toronto, now our community has expanded to over 250,000 Muslims, it is expanding so rapidly that the government is in shock when they realize how many Muslims there are living in the metro Toronto
area, now called the Greater Toronto Area. And in Canada itself. A recent survey said that 20% of the children born in Canadian hospitals are Muslims today in Canada. And this is a number that was not known. So well people did not know Canada as a country where Muslims were expanding at this rate.
But with expansion,
we are developing some very serious problems. And for a long time, we were in a state of denial buried ahead in the sense and we said no, we are Muslims, we have the Quran, we have the Sunda we have the best way we are the best nation raised up for people. And the problems continued. And then when the young people
who were growing up within families and many of the families migrated to this part of the world, from the Muslim countries, with the intention of only staying in America to gain an education. Some people came here just to make a little money. And then their intention was to return to the Muslim world. But with the catastrophic changes that went on in the Muslim world in the 80s 70s 80s. And even in the 90s. It made it almost impossible for many of the Muslims to return to their countries in Africa, in the Middle East and in Asia because of the changes that had gone on and then when 10 years went by, when 20 years went by, they turned around and looked at their children and they will
no longer little children running around little Zainab bin Zayed Mashallah to Batticaloa they will now young adults.
And in many cases, they had their own opinions about things. And they were American, or Canadian in their outlook, as well as Islamic.
And so we realized that
need to come together for education. Another large faction in our community have been embracing Islam or re entering into Islam in the Americas. For the past 200 years. The African American people, as you may know, are entering into Islam in large numbers. This is not a coincidence. What you have to realize is that over 30% of the African people who were captured were prisoners of war, and brought to this part of the world is in a state of slavery, where Muslims, and what you have to realize is that not only were they Muslims, who were captured and brought here, but in many cases, they were allama.
It has now come to the surface, that in Brazil, in the south, there was a huge slave revolt.
And the Muslims actually had an Islamic State, they were ruling by Sharia. They had baitul mouth, a National Treasury house, they were doing honorable Maru for Nadia Mancha. They were calling to the good forbidding the evil, and the Portuguese gave them boats and let them return to West Africa,
in Suriname, Dutch Guyana, and Jamaica, in Haiti, all throughout the Caribbean region. And in the United States. There were scholars of Islam, there were scholarly communities. There were individuals who were leading revolts, who also communicating with each other in classical Arabic. In Jamaica, they found an underground society with scholars from Timbuktu and Jenny, who were communicating to each other and sending documents in classical Arabic language. In America, Omar bin Saeed, his writings have come forward. Now he was writing the Quran by heart with the mother to be the hottest script in Morocco. And he was writing also a reseller, the work of even Abizaid al Qaeda
one, this is an important work in Maliki fic. And so these type of works were being circulated amongst the people here. But the pain of slavery, mother separated from father language being lost. The the Muslims and other religions were not able to maintain their faith, but they knew they were different. And so that feeling of being different, and the hidayah, from Allah subhanaw taala has now manifested itself, with so such large numbers now of African Americans returning to the faith, also the Native Americans, who for a long time were looked upon as people who are outside of the parameters of civilization, we now realize that Muslims had contact with the native people before
Columbus. We also recognize the fact that during the Spanish period, when the Spanish came was Congress,
French period French colonial period there were Muslims who came as workers, and some escaped and went to the native people. And so amongst the nations of the natives, there's actually traces of Islam. Right here in Florida, the Seminole nation, Seminoles have written records. And they're also pictures and cultural traits, showing that Muslims were amongst them. A group of seminars is a book called Black Indians, a group of seminars, went to Washington, DC, and met with the government. And they had turbans on and they had a buyer, some of them had openly Muslim names. This is right in Florida.
And so this reality is coming to the surface, that what we are dealing with now is a transition into something that was already here, but was covered up. And so those who have understood history, those who have controlled the masses in this country, in the Western world for the last two to 300 years, they recognize this fact they know this.
Secondly, they also understand that on an international level, the present economic system is falling apart. Capitalism is being
destroyed or just going into a recession now. And Marx and Engels and those socialists and communists, the theoreticians who looked at the economy of the world, they recognize the fact that somewhere in the 20th century, there would be a great recession, and capitalism would fall apart. And so they develop this communist ideology to supersede it. But it didn't work. Communism fell apart, and especially when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and they kill the innocent Muslims and the Mujahideen took a stand in that part of the world. And we know if you read what the prophet peace be upon him, said about the DA
about what happens when an innocent person is attacked, who has a connection with Allah He told us, it Taku TAO to Muslim, for laser baina how we're being Allah, He hijab, beware of the prayer of the oppressed person, there is no barrier in between that dua and Allah subhanaw taala. So the Soviet Union fell and come communism as a viable way of life is falling apart. Even Fidel Castro's Cuba, which was the seedbed of socialism in this part of the world, it's falling apart now. And everybody's running toward capitalism.
And so with that fault, with those two systems falling apart, the potential civilization which can supersede
the present civilizations, is the Islamic way of life, the Islamic civilization
in the last millennium, the year 1000, of the Christian era, and they're speaking about Millennium and how important Millennium is. But the last millennium, the largest city in the world, was kotoba, Cordoba, in Spain, that was known as Al Andalus. In that time,
that time, there are over a million people living you could walk in any direction for 20 kilometres, and the streets will lit lights, running water, universities,
public baths, and the great scholars and those who sought civilization education, from throughout Europe in different parts of the world would go into Seville and Toledo and Granada, Valencia, and also to other parts of the Muslim world, in order to get an education.
The same way we come to the University of Miami today, we go to Oxford, or Sorbonne, we go to the non Muslim capitals, and we take off our Islamic lifestyle. And we become like them seeking an education. To go back to our countries. The last millennium, the scholars of the world would throw off their cultures, learn Arabic, learn how to make Wazoo and clean themselves
and learn to write properly, and then go amongst the Muslims, then they would take that back to their countries. And if you can really go into the source books, dealing with civilization, the Renaissance,
the new coming to life of civilization in in Europe in the 14th 15th century, you will see it is the legacy of the Muslim world.
Now one of the important parts of this civilization that I wanted to just focus on, without going into details into that understanding is the fact that Muslims were able to develop a type of tawheed, ik, all inclusive educational system.
That is that through the concept of tawheed of oneness and unity. We not only saw that we were creations unto Allah,
and that there's one God, but also we related to knowledge from any part of the world.
That this hikma and hikma dollar to movement, that hikma that wisdom and knowledge wherever it comes from is the last property of a believer anywhere you get it. This is the property of a muscle the Muslims are able to take the knowledge of the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, from India, from parts of Africa, from all parts of the world, we're able to put it together with Quranic understanding and give it a new type of dynamism.
make it relevant, the number system.
Roman numerals were confusing people
with Islamic concepts and also with knowledge of ancient India and ancient Egypt, because it's probably in the ancient pyramid the Step Pyramid in Saqqara in Egypt. There there is writings from the Old Kingdom 3000 BC, using zero
decimal numbers in ancient Egypt, so it's probably there when they first began to use it. It also went to India it manifested itself. So Muslims were able to take this give it their understanding cifa zero is Arabic word,
the number system algebra from Java, and it goes on your trigonometry or calculus. All this came from this Islamic understanding using the Arabic language. And so they were able to give it a new life, a new impetus, and then it was ready to serve the world. Now unfortunately, we ourselves left our faith.
In the next generations, we forgot Allah subhanaw taala
we began to look at each other as nations and tribes out to be a journey.
You're an Arab, non Arab, Persian, Turkish burba.
You come from different parts of the Chinese. You send Elise, looking at different nations and different tribes, we divided up also the rich
began to look at themselves differently as the poor, the Ashraf, the noble ones relating to the family of the properties disallowed, even saw themselves as a class or a Tabata, a type of caste, above the other Muslims.
Corruption came in with the wealth. And so when this came in, and as the Prophet Lisa slammed said, in the hadith of Oban, that disease would strike the Muslims, there will be large numbers, they would be defeated, they would you probably heard this idea, they would be like the foam and scum on top of the surface, no wait, when they asked him, What is the disease that would come into the hearts of the Muslims. He told them how but dunya Wakata here to note that you will love the life of this world, and you would hate death.
And so when that came in, they were divided up and they were defeated.
And that light of civilization went over to somebody else, the secular rule first with Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and then on to the other kingdoms, and
areas of influence in Europe. Today, we are now coming from into the 500 year, we are living under this material civilization after five centuries, and what is the result? pollution. The environment is turning against us, this El Nino thing Lavinia is going out of control.
And in the next 10 years, we're gonna see catastrophic
environmental changes. So the economy of the world is falling apart, the environment is falling apart, the social life is falling apart, the political system is falling apart.
And we have the alternative. Now, we let's be honest with ourselves, we're coming out of a colonial period. In that colonial period, we were forced to submit to another culture, whether it be the Italians, the French, the British, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Belgium's, wherever it was, who conquered our countries, in order to have upward mobility, you had to ape the culture, imitate the culture of the colonial rulers, the more etiquette you had, the more characteristics you had of the elite of the Colonial Office, the higher you rise,
the more Islamic you were in your etiquette and adapt, they would consider you to be outside of civilization, they will consider you to be uncivilized. And they came into some countries.
And even though the people wrote an Arabic language, and they spoke their own language, whether it's Turkish, Persian, Kiswahili, hausa, Malay, whatever that language was the Bosnian language. And then if you did not write, if you did not, if you weren't literate in French, and English,
or Italian, they said you're illiterate.
Even though you could write Arabic, even though you knew your Persian language, you are good in Turkish. If you did not know that language, you are illiterate.
So therefore, our schools became French schools,
British English schools, and we were striving for this.
In some countries, even officially, when high school students would take tests, they would send you to medical school, the best students, engineering school, accountancy,
law school, and the ones who could not make it on the test, they send you to the Quran school.
Officially, in some countries, they do that even up until now, they do it in some countries. So what happened with that Islamic education was looked upon as not being the highest education.
It was good and important, but wasn't the highest now with the fall of communism.
With the falling of capitalism,
with morality going so low in this part of the world, even in the White House.
Morality totally out of control. Muslims are realizing that their Islam is a gem. It's like a diamond, a beautiful gem and we've been covering it up all this time. Now we need to take the gym out
and show it to the world. We need to benefit from it first, and then show it to the world. How do we do this? I want to be very practical with you
Because we don't have any more time left. I'm telling you, if you understand the history of this country, we don't have much time left.
The Prophet peace and blessings be upon him said in a hadith reported by
Abu Massoud by Eben Ahmad Al Ansari. In this Hadith, the properties that Sam said in the mimma Adra canesten kalamunda, Buta oola is lm testa he first not my *, the wild card for PC problem said, from what has come to us what the people have understood from the words of the early prophetic revelation. If you don't have higher, if you don't have shame, then do anything. You're capable of anything. And that's the situation now, in this society, even though it is so powerful technologically, shame is gone out of the people.
And why the purpose Department said l hyah. minute, man,
that modesty and shame is part of faith.
This is what distinguishes one of the distinguishing points about a Muslim,
how he or she deals with other people, not weakness, but it is humility and modesty for Allah subhanaw taala.
And so now, our challenge, which is a very interesting challenge is that we now have to
resurrect the Islamic teachings
and bring it in line with the technology of the 20th century.
And then bring that new dynamism again, that can be used in the 21st century. This is, I believe, one of our greatest challenges that we face. And if we are able to do this in Sharla, that I believe strongly that we will have a definite alternative to these societies.
But that means we have to focus, I believe strongly in two areas. One is the area of education.
And secondly is the area of the family.
Because without families as the building blocks of society, there is no society
and without education, without people who are carrying that Islamic understanding and have the dynamism and the knowledge and capability, then we don't have direction.
So we need to focus on this for a long time. Muslims focus on the political aspects, the economic aspects. When you have a lecture in a community or a gathering, if you talk about a family, the family issues, then you only get maybe about five to 10% of the community comes out. And three quarters are sisters, be talking about the family, right?
If you're talking about education, in the past, they would also you'd only get 40% of the community. If you talk politics, this Jamaat against that Jamaat, this he mom did wrong and the executive committee is going to get him. Everybody's out there, the place is crowded. They want the politics bring a hot political issue from the Muslim world, Islamic State,
Islamic State, overthrow the government, hot political issue, everybody comes out.
But when they went to one of the great scholars of Islam, Amazon Rupa Mola from Morocco, and they and they asked him about
Islamic State.
And he looked at people who were not even dealing with Islam. And he told me, he said, yet Lebanon FET, doing a surety they are asking for the victory without fulfilling the conditions of the victory. You want Medina and you haven't gone through Mecca yet.
You want to have an Islamic State. But yet tawheed is not in your heart.
Your character is not developed yet.
And so the families is a crucial issue that we have to look at and we have to not bury our heads in the sand. What we developed in Toronto, is Islamic social services. It's a new institution where we do family counseling.
We deal with the issues. There's a problem between husband and wife, parents and children. Teenagers are running away. Children's Aid Society is taking your child. Let's deal with reality now. This is the basis of our community social services.
Those who are involved in social services have to have confidentiality. That means they have to keep the secrets of other Muslims. We have this bad tendency amongst us that we talk too much. We talk and especially people from the same national
analogy. I had people come in a person came in are from Bangladesh. And they said, Okay, I'll tell you my problem, but don't tell the Bengalis.
Okay, another person came from Egypt. And they said, Yes, I'll tell you but don't tell the Egyptians. Every country they say that they're afraid of their own people. Why? Because when people hear things they get on the phone Oh, you know what happened to such and such info landfill and and this and that and they're talking and then suddenly your business is all over the leadership those in responsible positions have to have secrecy.
confidentiality, they do not speak about people's secrets they do not carry minima, or begin Mima scandal.
Prophet peace be upon him said law yet Hello, Jana. Now, ma'am,
that the person who carries scandal will not enter Paradise that's serious. It's very serious. And so confidentiality
and also facing the issues head on, and trying to give solutions that are Islamic, and also dealing with the best professional methodologies used in this part of the world, combining both worlds. And so doctors, social workers, lawyers, need to come together with moms, community leaders, and work together now to solve the family problems. And if it means you need a safe area, where an abused woman or an abused child can come to that area, and not feel threatened, then you need to have that
this is a crucial issue. We have to go at these problems and try to develop the kind of family where the home is a source of peace. The home is not a battleground.
But the home is a battleground, then how can we go out and spread peace in the land.
The second area, which I want to focus on a little bit more,
especially since we are here in education, we are involved in education. And I'm sure that some of the points that I'm going to mention here to you have already been discussed by you. This is not I don't believe that what I'm saying is something new. But I want to just give you some ideas that we have come across in our struggle in education in Canada and that area. And what I've seen over the years traveling in the communities, and this is making Islamic education relevant to the society we live in. How can these courses that we're doing become relevant, because we need to have that one of the problems we faced about our Sunday schools, our weekend schools is that the children started to
get really bored.
And they everybody's memorizing Falcon, NASS and kulula had the reading the same Sierra story, and they come in sleep, you know, all during the class. And they they bow, they want to stay home and watch cartoons, right?
This is what we face. This is not you, though. And no, that's not you. This is our community. They want to stay home and they want to watch cartoons. So we have to think about, you know, making Islamic education relevant. Also, we have to think about our goals, what are the goals that you're moving toward through your education? That's important when you set your curriculum, that you have something in mind as an as an objective? Where are you going with this? Number one,
we need to try to provide access to original sources of Islam, we have to begin to get our youth interested in going into original Arabic sources, that they can have a taste of the Arabic language, and they can begin to love the search of Arabic language. And that also means Arabic speaking people. That's what it also means. Because many of the Arabic speaking countries
in their street language, they are media, what we call patois here, it's very different than for samata Chaga olek all types of things people are saying you know what I'm talking about right? We're teaching must mooka some country they say is a smoke
is smoke a chimney smoke and all these different things right for my smoker. Okay, now we want to teach classical Arabic so even Arabic speaking person
can begin to get the taste of Quranic Arabic
and then converse with others in this, through this knowledge, we can begin to get access to the original source that gives us access to the original sources. Secondly, and these are some broad objectives.
We need to separate Islam from culture.
Islam from culture, because many times what is true
transmitted to the student is not necessarily the principles of Islam, it is the cultural practice in a particular country.
And that means that the teacher has got to be very clear, be able to go to the sources themselves and make sure that they're not teaching cultural things.
This can come in prayer, this can come in, in general
dealings character, and a lot of different areas.
The third area is that we need to go about reconstructing the Islamic personality to reconstruct the Islamic personality. This is an all around personality. A person who is a junior and aka both combined, striving in this world, not of the world, not controlled by the world, but striving in this world toward that next life. Right? Not one extreme or the other extreme. And fourth, we need to develop muscle, caffeine and aroma. Now somebody who is moussaka that is a person who has the Kapha who has Islamic culture, education, General Islamic education, people who take courses like the one I did in Medina Kalia to Tao, Sula, Dean, who studied the soul of the deen become moussaka.
It is not an alum. an alum is somebody who brings you the sources, who memorizes the whole Quran and can really bring this up, there are other people who are cultured people. And, and that is a goal that we need to shoot for here. That least we can produce students who are cultured in Islam, they have a taste of Islamic Studies, they know how to access original sources. And they can translate the great works of the Allah and the scholars of the Muslim world into a relevant type of
practice for today. But also we need from the youngest students to project on making a developing or lemma and that is people who learn who memorize Quran before they're 10 years old, you know the system, memorize Quran before they're 10 years old, control the Arabic language, learn get into Hadith, right, start get into their studies, and then they go into Islamic education. Okay, we will have to produce in our next generation or the AMA. And I want to stress here, that the olema are not just men, that they're also women. And I say this, because if you look at the snad, Look, Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Malik, you look at many of the great scholars of Islam, you will find that there are
women who also taught them.
And we were studying a book of CD admins or rock rahimullah fests. And one of the great scholars in Morocco. And within his, his, his net, that, you know, one of his greatest teachers was his grandmother,
his grandmother, and he actually came up under her first before he went out,
to eat to actually go to other people. And so you find many great scholars like this, they're learning from their mothers, they're learning from their grandmother, knowledge is in their home. They're learning from a woman also, especially in their early years. And so this is important. And then again, the situation with the sisters themselves. What is happening now is that there are women in this society who want to hear about Islam.
And somebody's got to teach them.
And sisters have to understand their rights. Just in the marriage area alone. How many sisters know about the rules of Kapha suitability? How do you make suitability between your young child or your teenager, your young adult and another young adult to get married? What is suitability? How do you go into how many of us know even in divorce, and this divorce thing is playing in our community? How many sisters know about Holla Holla. You know, they have the right to give back to Mom, how many know about
that the marriage can be unraveled. If the man does not fulfill certain
rights within the marriage, how many people don't know that.
They're stuck within marriage, like the practice of the Orthodox Jews.
And it comes out where we call alma locka, where women are hung between marriage and divorce. And the husband says out, he leaves her and he said, I will not divorce you until the day of judgment. I'll never divorce you so you'll be hanging in between marriage you'll never get married again. That's not Islamic.
That's more aloka is not Islamic. And the Sharia has solutions to this. There's solutions but we don't know this.
The Maha the dowry itself.
How many knows the importance of the MA
there was even one discussion in shafa effect where they were talking about the Maha if there is a difference of opinion between the two families as to how much the Maha would be for the girl then you give the dowry of the Maha based upon the average dowry given to a woman in your area?
It is a difference of opinion, then you give the average dowry in your area, what is the average dowry given in Miami?
Does anybody know? Think about that? Does anybody know the average dollar was the average salary? Is $5,000? Is it $20,000? Is the leather jacket and a pager? What is it?
What is the salary?
We're not sure
these are the kind of areas that throughout education we need to go into to build our community
okay. So, therefore, we need to develop these type of leaders. Now, some of the relevant areas of emphasis, I want to just put out a few areas of emphasis that we can emphasize on in our
education. One is as I said before developing a sound basis in classical Arabic.
And that is to nurture in the students the four skills, reading, writing comprehension, speaking comprehension meaning hearing and speaking to develop these skills and
writing from the beginning we need to try to develop in the students speaking a basic hawara that can go on between the students so they're using the Arabic even my mother has Akita must mocha is me Abdullah must move is muhuali and the talking like mean aina and to animate America, in America and then going on so they're using things if they know this when I enter enter, and admin America they're using that they know Joomla Izmir they know announced sentence they can use a noun sentence, they didn't have to put the verb to be in that sentence. So they have learned the grammar rules if you try to teach them Joomla Izmir you frightened everybody out of the room
because Arabic grammar can seem intimidating, but if you start to use it, it's logical it's logical language, English is illogical language gh T and pH and all these letters that you know are written and not pronounced. And you have to learn so many exceptions to the rules right? Arabic is very logical, but you got to learn the rules. Right once you know the rules, then you can get into the Arabic. So to emphasize the secondly, or lwml core and Well howdy that we start to learn the heirloom that we learn something about the Quran itself, in the sense of how when it was revealed, you know, what types of
verses are there? Mecca and Medina Medina and versus, you know, the aluminum core and the Tafseer starts to go into the taste of the Quran, right and then also into the Hadith that that we start to go into the Hadith to get an idea give the students a feel of Hadith What is his net? How how this you know chain of narrators, what is a good Hadith and what is a weaker deed? What does astrology give them a taste so they can start to see how beautiful this aluminum Hadith really is. In looking at the Quran itself, again, we should be very sincere to it, we should have tahseen tilawat he is about awamori he was a double iottie that we should have we should have beautification of the
reading of the Quran. You should read it with touch read right touch read what they say. Right touch Riedel halluf will modify the tool will poof
right touch Riedel halluf that you give the proper rights to the letters, and you know, the stops, how to stop and stop, touch read, everybody needs to learn that. But also we need to learn that we have to follow it.
As many times we read the Quran, but we don't follow the verse we don't love the Quran. As a prophet peace be upon him said the time would come when people would be reading the Quran and melodious tones and it wouldn't go past their throats.
Okay, wouldn't touch their hearts. And lastly, what we need to reflect on the verses learn to reflect on the Quran and reflect on the meanings. The third area we need to focus on is a practical sessions or practical sessions in tauheed. And that is the oneness of Allah because that is the essence of Islam itself. And we need to focus in this society, that our essence is not just certain clothes that we wear. It's not just certain language or food that we eat. The essence of being Muslim is the one belief in one God and we accept all the prophets
And the Prophet Mohammed is of Islam as the last prophet. So this needs to be a practical tauheed showing to heed amongst the prophets showing tawheed in other nations, you can also show to heat then showing especially what they call to heat on a better.
And that is the unity in worship, how tawheed plays itself out in your worship, not only just in salaat, but in your, in your practice in your dealings with other people. And so he talks about goes into even magic, superstition, all the different forms of shirk, that can come into the oma, this is one of our great problems now that's holding us back, is that we're afraid of everything except Allah.
Afraid of the night afraid of genies coming inside of us, afraid of magicians putting spells on us, right? We're free to these things. You start talking about the Jin amongst people, and everybody's eyes gets big.
Their eyes get big. He said yes. Last time I saw the footprints, we were backwards. The feet were backwards and they're walking.
And I heard sounds outside. Something happened to me, I have a headache brother Abdullah of Eric.
He's stressed out he's got two jobs. He's a victim of stress, but he thinks the agenda is inside of his head.
And so to have that belief in Allah, and to have that feeling that connection with the Creator. The fourth point we would emphasize is a Sita to Namibia
and especially what they would call fickle Sierra,
the knowledge understanding of the Sierra, you don't just read it as a story. Take knowledge from the different incidents that happen to the properties of slump and his followers. And
you can read see that even his heart, you can read a Shiva kasi ad is a number of works that you can read, where you will find Sierra being expressed in a way where you can get something out of it. Okay, this brings alive Islamic teachings. Theater is important. And we use this as one of our main subjects for the students. And that is because the young people here, especially those who watch television a lot, and that's just about everybody. There used to watching stories, everything is a story. The hero is there and his family is blown up by this wicked guy. And now he's gonna go get him.
It's got to get to evil people, the aliens have just landed over there. And so they see a story. And then it comes to a conclusion. And and some of the some of these stories even teach them something, unfortunately, that teaching them the wrong ideas. But they'll teach them something with that story. When you tell the some of the stories of the properties of the slab. It's not just a story. It teaches something that we can learn from. If you go deep into it, you'll teach us Tafseer It teaches fick it can teach Hadith, everything can be inside of the Sierra. Also, you can also you can teach what is called the stories of Sahaba while the Allahu anhu. And there is a work by Abdul Wahid
Hamad, which is an English called companions of the Prophet.
If you can't go to the Arabic sources, you can go to companions of the Prophet, and there's female also companions to Hobie yet, and these are practical stories. And when the children hear this, then you know they This is an example of somebody who did something, then you can go through Islamic history and you can look at different individuals in Islamic history and you can follow their lives todich have been Ziad selaginella, yoobi. Many different people throughout history, you can see their examples, right up right up into recent times. And and these can be used. Number six is basic fick.
Basic, thick, simple, practical, thick, so the students can begin to taste what phip is, and to know how to make their prayers properly, to harder, and all these different aspects in a simple way. But I want to stress that we need to have tolerance between schools of thought there's a problem happening in some parts of America, where people are now
you know, getting themselves fortified around schools of thought, I am a Hanafi I am a Shafi I am a Maliki and in some cases they you know, they look at each other you Shafi you know some people said Well, I mean they came to me they said Kenna Hanafi Marissa Shafi,
right, as though it's like two different religions.
They're fortifying themselves. Yes, you need to have a school of thought as the basis of your faith, but not to be intolerant. There's another new wave that says no school of thought.
Don't have any school of thought. Don't go to any other scholars. That's another extreme position. This extremism
because you can't
not negate the great scholars of Islam. Okay at the same time, you have to go back to the scholars themselves and see how tolerant they were of each other. How they are the love of the sources made them love the other scholars, they will teach us and students of each other, they will not rivals making different churches like Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals and Baptists. This is a different concept which is alien to us. The seventh point
is that okay also in Fiqh, halal and haram, we need to have general courses in halal and haram. So the students have a practical application of halal and haram in their life. Number seven is the Sunnah in a HELOC character and Mama lot.
Okay, that we have emphasized for a long time about that,
how to pray how to fast but we need to emphasize now, character and dealings into personal relationships. Well, I'm a lot. And there's a whole body of Sunda in this area, how you deal with people, how you address people, your respect for each other, respect for children, for adults, adults for children, men for women, modesty, how you deal mamilla, you know how you do business, there's a lot of different areas of the sun, not in this, this field, eight knowledge of the environment physical warfare.
And in that you need to have a general history of you know, from you look at history from an Islamic perspective. Also, we need to look at the history of this part of the world to get a general idea with Islamic perspective. What is the history of Muslims in this part of the world, that's an interesting subject. Because you might not know there might have been Muslims right here in the same place when there was no University in a little Masjid. And they tried for 50 years, and then they went, they got lost, you need to know about them. So you don't fall in the same trap that they fell into. Now coming to a conclusion, some of the sub supplementary aspects of Islamic education. One is
as much as possible, we need an Islamic setting.
You need to have an Islamic setting. And you need to try to set things around you, you know, to start to appreciate some of the Islamic you know, even in designs and clothing, in your food, you know, and whatnot, you need to go into your culture. You know, our children are in great need of culture. Because our culture now is becoming the angelic culture of the West. Even in Mecca, Medina, they have Pizza Hut, McDonald's, you know, it's all over the place. So we need to get them to appreciate other parts of Islam. You know, in many Muslim countries for a hobby, Muslims used to do calligraphy cut.
And they learn how to do the cut. Very beautiful. Now is basketball. Right? Baseball, okay, it's good for your athletic, right. But if that's your main hobby and life, you want to be Michael Jordan, you got a problem.
Because only one of the billion are going to be like Michael Jordan, in this society. And a Muslim is not going to be able to do all the all the things that he had to do to get that money. Because we have limits.
Okay, and so hobbies, Islamic hobbies, okay, this is important thing, culture, even making pottery.
Okay, designing things the Muslims used to design, go to some of the Muslim countries go to Syria, go to our border, new in eastern part of Nigeria, go to Morocco, go to some parts of Pakistan and look, even in the furniture. There's Islamic design, and the clothing. There's Islamic design. We had this before we had a taste for Islam. We are Islam appeared in everything that we were doing, even in food that is given out to you. Even you know, we used to have these these little ritual things that they might seem trivial, but even serving tea and coffee to each other. How do you serve a guest? and serve coffee to your guests and tea? Somebody comes to your house in Miami? And they're
sitting down? Okay, what do they need? Especially if they come from Canada? They need a drink of water. Get him some water.
Right. So you shouldn't even say anything. You should be bringing water.
That's Islamic Adam. What do our children know? Somebody comes in you sit down, turn the TV. He's dying. He's thirsty. And suddenly he says, Can I have a drink of water brother?
And then just oh yeah, yeah, there's a guest here. Because the TV captured you right?
But the etiquette of Islam now deals with your guests. You know, see his health see what he needs or she needs. Take care of them. Right? These are little things but this is our culture. That's what spread Islam
that's why Islam spread
Across the Niger River, and into how salon and all the areas. That's why it's spreaded, Indonesia. That's why Indonesia is the largest Muslim country. It was merchants that went to Indonesia.
In India itself, the Hindus were influenced by Muslims.
All throughout the world, it is really the merchants and the scholars, and the people of character who spread Islam.
The next point is we need practical recreation.
We need to have a long in our classes. We even took a period of time in our Sunday school classes, to showing you our example. We teach Sierra, we would teach some Quran, we would teach some Hadith, and then we had wrestling class wrestling. So you separate the boys and you separate the girls. Okay, and the girls, the boys would do wrestling. And we get our Muslim brother who's good in wrestling, or good in martial arts and he teaches them so they have sports, right? That's what they love
the girls to need sports. Some people say well, wait a minute. No, the girls need sports to you look at the Sahaba yet read about the Battle of the trench and read about Muslim women. You see, they will they fought also.
They knew how to fight.
They live the tough life. Also. In Toronto, we had a rapist who was targeting Muslim women.
Only Muslim woman he loved. And so we started window classes, which is women's self defense. And a woman comes in and she teaches the sisters they can still wear loose clothing. And she teaches them how to defend themselves. If a rapist comes how you defend yourself what you do. And even at the end of the course, the sister broke the board
and said sister Xena broke the board in May 22 1998. And some sisters as you may have heard before I said this, some sisters put it over their bit in their bedroom. So next time they got into an argument with their husband, he looked at the board
and he said Mashallah to Vatican?
Well, I'm going to whom should avena whom we will solve our problem in mutual consultation. Right? He looked at the board that's Zeynep. Right. So practical, recreation,
riding horse riding.
Take them sometimes for horse riding. I saw a store here in Miami, where they were selling saddles and whatnot. Go outside of the city of Miami. And you find some people you know they're fishing the horse riding the hunting, take the Muslims hunting.
These are skills right? Swimming,
let them swim, even the sisters you can get an area, get a beach area or something and let the sisters be in an area they can still wear you know some parts of their clothing have to wear the clothing with the other people. And they can go inside that area brothers protect the area and let them swim. What we did is that we even work with the with the City of Toronto, and we got pools, swimming pools, and we had only women in the pools. Only Muslim sisters and we had some sisters who learned from women, they took lifeguard courses.
So the Muslim sisters were in the pool, and they were able to swim in the polls and they learn to swim. These are some practical points that we need to have to supplement our education. Number three as I said skills training and that can include
carpentry, agriculture, Home Economics and so forth and so on.
So, I want to leave you with these points. And you know, it is a challenge that we have in front of us. But really,
in this coming period that the you know in this time, which is which is coming on so rapidly. We need to have the type of leadership that can handle the challenges of the 21st century. It is that leadership in summary, which has proper knowledge of Islam, and has taqwa
also leadership that has balance and wisdom, balance hikma wisdom. Three, they have Islamic character
for courage and conviction, five a knowledge of the environment. Six emphasis on unity and cooperation with others. Unity type of leadership that emphasizes unity and cooperation and seven a positive approach. As a prophet PT Barnum used to say to his followers when he would send them out. Yes, you were allowed to ask you to buy Shirou wallet to make things easy. Don't make it difficult. Call them to what's good. Call them to stop. Don't drive people away. May Allah subhanaw taala help us in the coming of the 21st century. And may Allah develop the type of
Muslim homes and Islamic education that we need to present a dynamic
MC system for not only for the Muslim world, but for the whole of the planet Earth. akula Polly Heather was stopped for lolly walakum wa salaamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Yeah, sure
how involved the parents are in your school? How to get involved?
Why the most
negative towards Islamic education? Right? Okay, number one in terms of parental involvement in the Sunday school classes, the weekend schools, we had developed classes for the parents themselves, which were parallel to the classes for the students, which you may be doing yourself. And so there was existence classes, there was brothers classes, we even had some which were a joint a joint class for adults. And it was a subject that they could relate to. So that while the children were being educated, the parents also been educated. Because the problem is that the children start learning things and the parents don't learn, it develops a problem. Because when they go home, they see the
opposite.
So develops a problem. So the parents need to be educated. And then also to have periodic meetings with the parents, where you discuss the policy of the school. if they have any criticisms, suggestions, they have input, they have direct input into what goes on in the school, periodic meetings, that they would know they receive a communique. And they know that, you know, this time of year there would be the parent teachers meeting, in the biggest schools that we have there, they are new, they even form a parent Teachers Association. So this would be the Muslim parents of the children in the big schools. So this is like a full time school. So they would have a parents group
that works along with the administration, not against the administration, they work with the administration to solve the problems, and the administration should look upon the parents as a very important part of their leadership, you should realize that because these are the parents of the children. And that's very important in terms of, you know, the the negativity with Islamic education, as I said, at the beginning of the talk, you know, in the Muslim world, people are coming out of the colonial period. And during that period, Islamic education was looked upon as inferior education. Even though people are religious, they were religious. But still, they looked upon
deepest Islamic education as not relevant. So technology and the changes in society. And in some ways, it wasn't relevant, because it didn't deal with the science. It went away from science to some scholars even said that the earth is flat, up until the 80s. Big scholars said the earth is flat. They said nobody went out in space, they're liars, they cut the gap.
Okay, so when when people who are involved in technology heard that they say these people are ignorant.
And so a gap developed between the professional people who are educated in the secular system, and the people who are educated in this in the Islamic education system. So that developed, now that gap is closing.
And people are coming together. But it will take some time, because there's a lot of misunderstanding. And also, there needs to be a type of wisdom in leadership that can deal with both worlds. It can deal with both worlds, but it's coming together, but it will take some time. Okay. Also people from America, who are accepting Islam,
you know, did not have the benefit of knowing how deep Islamic education really is. Because many of the early movements for Islam in North America, were founded by people and I'm not blaming them. They did their best, but they invented the religion. They invented the religion. So they even sometimes claimed Prophethood. And they invented how to pray, how to fast how to do everything. without going to the sources. Now they were trying to survive, right, but they thought it up themselves. And that's not the way Islam has been transmitted. There is creativity, but it's revelation, you got to learn the revelation.
Okay, and that was lost, that people didn't America didn't have that understanding of how important the revelation is. Now it's here. Now it's widespread now. And so people are now realizing the importance of learning classical Arabic, and going to the revelation.
Yes, to add on the question to the system, and we do understand that all the stakeholders of Islamic education
and we do have the classes for the adults. But the problem is how to motivate the parents to bring them away.
And that's the major problem we are facing right over here.
Well, I, you know, to be honest with you, brother, I don't claim to have the answer to this.
Because even in our own area, somehow the parents are not motivated. Enough, they don't realize the seriousness of it. Because in many cases they want to they, you know, they think that their main thing in life is working, or just cooking food. And you know what, not any of these are important aspects of life, obviously. But the Islamic education is crucial.
Because why are you cooking the food? How do you cook it? You got to know halau.
Right? How do you earn your money?
You got to know halal and haram.
See, so so these are important things, but how to motivate people.
Again, if you have some diversified type of, you know, classes, interesting topics, you know, maybe you can get people out, you know, like that. And with the youth recreation to active active sports type things that can get the youth out to a lot of the programs. But really, this is a general problem within our community. Man, I think unfortunately, they're going to be motivated by by the American society. Because you know, this society is going to some big changes. And so people are going to realize Islam is a survival kit. It's a survival kit. And that's why there's more people coming
to education. But as you said, they bring over here when they go to the shopping center,
form the fans augmentation,
people will react to one
from instead of having a PGA.
Except for the one who has the President of the PGA the rest, we will not elected as the president of the PDA disappear. Yeah. Well, no, the major challenge, it's a challenge. But you know, you have to try to continue, because it is an unnecessary element. Try somehow, if you get a speaker to come in, you know, Dr. Herman Sokka, who comes up, whoever comes, you have a session with him with the parents.
And so they might come to listen to him. If you have somebody like that, in it, and then send a flyer home to the parents. So this is your session, now, you have somebody who's going to talk to you like something like that some ways of motivating them to come out. Okay, the floor is open again. Anybody else? Yes.
Sometimes they are very strict.
And this may scare the student and
if they are,
also make
sure.
So,
this is where balance is required. And this is not easy. Because many of us when we think of Islamic education from the Muslim world, you think of the US, ah, he doesn't know the thing and you beat him. He doesn't know what beat him. That's what a lot of the Quran schools were, you'll know the lesson they beat new every five minutes, they beaten you. Okay, and they train students to terror.
Then on the other hand, you have people who are super liberal, and they allow the students do anything. And some of these public schools I don't know about here in Miami. But in Canada, it got so bad that carrying weapons and class they were all these strange clothes to school and they're walking around, no respect for the teachers. It Like It went the opposite direction. So now we need balance. We need balance. You know, and this again, is it requires some creativity, or you know, like flexibility. It's not easy.
But the administration needs to be strict and needs to be disciplined. There's got to be an etiquette and respect. If you don't have etiquette, you don't have respect, you're finished. The children have to learn respect. At the same time. There's got to be love. It's got to be motivated out of sincerity and love and care. Not like terror, not terrorizing them. And that's that's not an easy thing to reach. It's got to be a combination and a balance of the two.
Okay, any other questions? Any sisters have
motivation for purpose? Yeah, it doesn't work with very young children. But the motivation came from my son who flatly said, if you're not going to come along with me with the glasses, I'm not going to go That's right. So you're I am I'm coming every Sunday because Mashallah.
That's right. Motivation can come from children.
Simply that he will not go.
Yeah.
You mentioned information going back to sources is 15 different books and everything. You think nowadays we have a CD ROM that me as a Muslim, I have a question about marriage. I type it in. I have the sources right there. I mean, I don't Is there something
out there. I don't see that out there. But maybe, I mean, when you have a subject matter, that's the way you do research, well, you know, there are CD ROMs, which are being developed now, you know, that that bring, you know, a lot of discussions in it. But, you know, Islamic education, like any serious discipline, requires people who are educated properly. For instance, you know, if you wanted to have an answer to brain surgery, you know, and you have a CD ROM, that, that tells you which part of the brain to operate on, if you don't know medicine, they're talking Chinese to you, it's a language, you do not understand what they're talking about. So therefore, there are CD ROMs, but you
have to learn how to use those that that knowledge, you have to learn, you know, you have to go to the school, the foundations and the fundamentals of the subjects in order to appreciate the subject itself. Because sometimes when a person makes a fatwa, it is based upon a whole foundation of information, why they come to that decision, you know, that, that they've come to?
You mentioned, right, taking the average,
I mean, giving up just the subject, you can have all this information out there. Well,
you know, and there are books, you know, like Ficus Sana, which is translated into English, there are books like that, that have tried to bring together the information for you.
And
tours, right, well, I don't have full knowledge in that area itself.
Subject now, that was what I call the
you said, you know, the load sentiment issue talking about I think we are working on the same language
that definitely helps in developing personality.
As you see, most of our students come from the Pakistanis, right.
And as we have educated, you know, go ahead with the you understand and
complete the Quran so that we can have a big function, right? And tell everybody the challenges
that we cannot accomplish at Sunday school, and that the major problem that we
have is for two years, five years, and you still he or she has not broken?
And how you answer that?
Well, you know, people again, we have to separate Islam from culture.
And some of the things that that we did in Muslim countries were actually cultural practices. And because, you know, in Arabic speaking countries,
to read the Quran like that, with no understanding, people don't do that, because they speak Arabic. So that's sort of a cultural thing. And so some people will just read through the Quran itself, and just read it, and then they finished and they do the Hutton you know, whatever. And then Mashallah, and you know, that's it. But today, you need the knowledge of what's in the Quran as a survival kit to use it. Now, this does not take away from Tajweed, tahseen, tilava, tea, everybody should learn Tajweed This is crucial. And it should be part of the curriculum. What can be provided, what some people do is that in you, and these Sunday schools, we don't have enough time to cover everything,
what they do is they have after us, they have a teacher, their higher Quran teacher, and every day or every other day, or twice a week after us at a different time than the big class. That teacher reads Quran with them.
So the ones who want to do that, they can have the audacity after classes, you know, where they'll read through the whole Quran with a teacher, because those teachers need to have total focus on what they're doing. They can't they're not teaching all these other subjects. But when we're in a greater community, there's other needs. There are other cultures other needs. So those who have that need what we have done, you hire a Quran teacher, and then at a different time, you go specifically for that Quranic reading. You come to the general class, for your general Islamic Studies and your knowledge, then that way maybe you can overcome.
Yeah.
Well, I'm in Toronto this different this full time and this Sunday classes also, some Unfortunately, because of the size of our community, that's probably the same here. Some people cannot afford to go to the full time school, or they're too far away. We don't have enough schools. So the ones who can't afford it, then would send their children to school like in some masters have Quran class after us. So the go after awesome, and on the weekends, they'll have a Saturday or Sunday class, where they get together like that to do to fill in, but really, we should all be striving toward full time Islamic education.
There's no way around this. And as the American public schools get worse and worse, we will realize there's no way out. But to put our children in full time Islamic schools, where they get a good academic education to, where they learn the math, they learn the science, they learn English, but at the same time, they're an Islamic environment, peer group is Islamic. Right, and then they'll learn some Islamic Studies at the same time. And hopefully, eventually, you'll become integrated completely. Where it's a, it's a really,
totally Islamic type of education.
community, we have a community where
they
come out, and we're thinking this is going to be empty, you know, building loss everywhere, and
coming up, and then we have a problem with if someone gets involved and doing everything,
you know, helping others will sit back and say, Oh,
yeah, there's a problem. And really, the masjids have to become practical centers. You know, we have a tendency to want to build Muslims. We have many beautiful masters in the Muslim world, the Blue Mosque in Malaysia, martial arts are so many, you know, Masters in Cairo. And so we want to build something like, you know, I'm a liberal arts and Kairos, some huge giant monster we want to build. And that's not practical for the situation we're in. And when you go back to the time of the province of Islam is the masjid was small.
You could bang your head on the ceiling, if you were a little tall. It's a practical small building. So you know, complex that has Masjid school, also, recreation facilities, gymnasium, should be attached to the masjid.
Then the youth will come to play basketball, or to play soccer, and other things, and then they can mix a lot when it's time for Sadat. So, you know, we have to be very practical, you know, when we're looking at the new structures now. And there are many engineers, now Muslim engineers, who have developed very good patents, good, you know, ways of simple Islamic architecture,
where you can get a practical building that doesn't have a big club bar dome on it, a giant minaret
but can have basic Islamic design, and a practical functional building. And the activities have to be very practical once you know that the students and the parents can be involved. Okay, any other questions anybody has?
Yes?
Yes, there's a lot of information on the internet. Now. However, you have to be able to distinguish between those good things and those bad things. Unfortunately, for my experience with the internet, the shaytaan is really powerful in the internet.
And there's even some people that are so wicked, that they put Islam, you know, on their website, and they're actually talking against Islam.
So you have to find the good websites, you know, that, that Muslims have checked for you that you can go into them. So you won't get one of these devilish type of things. Because because there's no control over this, you know, over the neck itself. They can't control it. So you know, yes, you can get information but try to get good websites. And some of the brothers are here from the MSA of MSL, they can give you some good websites in Sharla that you can access. Okay.
Yes, yes.
This question about funding, and something that you mentioned earlier that some Muslim family
that kids
don't have enough schools
and going with the idea of separation of religion and
any attempt to build some schools
some, some some mission
that could accomplish both. And then therefore, to qualify for government funding here in the state. last three, four years is a big challenge charter schools, but they do not fund religious schools, some saying
a lot of similar has been any offense.
Well, you know that there has been attempts. Even some groups have excellent Islamic Society of North America. They have actually taken over school buildings that were deserted. They took over the buildings and that's
Have a lot of problems because the whole building is set up in such a way that it can be passed by the Board of Education. And they even put their curriculum next to the board's curriculum. And then that way they know you're able to get some funding. The problem is, though, sometimes, you know, and this is based on where you live, sometimes the local people have some conditions they put on you, you know, that are very difficult to, you know, to do a good Islamic education. But if you have people who are involved in education, you have teachers who know the Board of Education, and then they can work along with the community, you know, to really help you, you know, to get the local
funding, each area is a little bit different, though.
You know, and some people have tried to do dour looms, they get an area and they set up a dresser.
Unfortunately, sometimes they transport something right out of India, or another part of the Muslim world, they put it right down as though you're right, you're in India, you know, and that sometimes doesn't help because it doesn't, it's not relevant. It's good for memorizing Quran.
But then it's not relevant when you come out of the school to the society itself. So really, some attempts have been made, and probably the Islamic Society of North America, they have one of the brightest space school systems. Recently, by the use of Islam. There was a meeting with brother Yusuf Islam, and Abdullah Idris and a few other people, some two teachers from South Africa and our brother, Bilal Philips, Abu Amina, and myself, we were in Toronto, and we met about Islamic education. So what they're trying to do now is to revitalize the schools everywhere, and set new curriculums and to unite the curriculums, there's a move being made, you know, like that. And even
to make it up to the standards of the state, wherever they are. That's a move being made.
Recently,
I was in Detroit, and I met two principal,
Muslims,
they qualify as
charter schools, and they teach you basically incorporated
few subjects.
Arabic was was thought was cool. And some basic religion, you know, they say religious teachings, you know, that being specific, and that way they
get
Detroit has a very large Muslim population, over a million Muslims in the metropolitan Detroit area. And so they have, they have political power. And so they're able to get this Yemenis communities and Lebanese communities have been there for like 5060 100 years. So they have the power to be able to, you know, get certain assistance from the state and whatnot, eventually here with Muslims unite, we can unite, you can also get some benefits from the taxes that we pay every day.
If I can educate my children
I call
the private tutor.
What do you think?
Well, the the importance of the Sunday school is that
Islam is a way of life. And so therefore, it's not just information given there. There's, there's peer pressure. And there's also interaction with other Muslims. That's part of our Islam. Because if you learn, if somebody says to you, you're supposed to be generous, you're supposed to cooperate, what our new eligibility with taqwa? How do you do to our, if you don't have anybody to cooperate with, you'll never learn how to share? You see what I'm saying? But when you're here, you interact with each other. How do you learn to lower the gaze? How do you learn to be modest, even sometimes you learn how to dress, you learn things from seeing other Muslims. Also, it's important for the
young people, their identity,
their identity, who are you,
if we don't enforce in them, you're a Muslim. And this is a group of Muslims, that's your community, then they start seeing themselves as somebody else. And when you watch television too much, you start seeing yourself like somebody on television, then you get a real problem.
So therefore, the you know, the Society of Muslims, interaction with the society Muslim is a very important element of education, because Islamic education is living education. It's not just information.
Right? It's information and practice, and especially the character we emphasize in these times the character muamalat the interrelationship between people, and our group as a society. So I want to end at this point, and I pray that you know, you will be successful in your striving here in your school.
And then Allah would bring us all together in unity and protect us from the fitna of the 21st century. Aku Kali how that was stopped for lolly walakum wa salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. he rebelled against
environmental changes. So the economy of the world is falling apart, the environment is falling apart, the social life is falling apart, the political system is falling apart.
And we have the alternative. Now, we let's be honest with ourselves, we're coming out of a colonial period. In that colonial period, we were forced to submit to another culture, whether it be the Italians, the French, the British, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Belgium's, wherever it was, who conquered our countries, in order to have upward mobility, you had to ape the culture, imitate the culture of the colonial rulers, the more etiquette you had, the more characteristics you had of the elite of the Colonial Office, the higher you rise,
the more Islamic you were in your etiquette and adapt, they will consider you to be outside of civilization, they will consider you to be uncivilized. And they came into some countries.
And even though the people wrote an Arabic language, and they spoke their own language, whether it's Turkish Persian, Kiswahili, hausa mulay, whatever that language was the Bosnian language. And then if you did not write if you did not, if you weren't literate in French, and English,
or Italian, they said you're illiterate.
Even though you could write Arabic, even though you knew your Persian language, you are good in Turkish, if you did not know that language, you are illiterate.
So therefore, our schools became French schools,
British English schools, and we were striving for this.
In some countries, even officially, when high school students would take tests, they would send you to medical school, the best students, engineering school, accountancy,
law school, and the ones who could not make it on the test, they send you to the Quran school.
Officially, in some countries, they do that even up until now, they do it in some countries. So what happened with that Islamic education was looked upon as not being the highest education.
It was good and important, but wasn't the highest now with the fall of communism,
with the falling of capitalism,
with morality going so low in this part of the world, even in the White House.
Morality totally out of control. Muslims are realizing that there Islam is a gem. It's like a diamond, a beautiful gem, and we've been covering it up all this time. Now we need to take the gem out
and show it to the world. We need to benefit from it first, and then show it to the world. How do we do this? I want to be very practical with you. Because we don't have any more time left. I'm telling you, if you understand the history of this country, we don't have much time left.
The Prophet peace and blessings be upon him said in a hadith reported by
Abu Masood by Ibn Ahmad Al Ansari, in this Hadeeth the properties that Sam said in the mimma adric announcement kalamunda Buta oola is lm testa he first not much in the world, for PC problem said, from what has come to us what the people have understood from the words of the early prophetic revelation. If you don't have high up, if you don't have shame, then do anything. You're capable of anything. And that's the situation now in this society, even though it is so powerful technologically, shame is gone out of the people.
And why is the Prophet peace upon him said Elijah Amina Eman
that modesty and shame is part of faith.
This is what distinguishes one of the distinguishing points about a Muslim
how he or she deals with other people, not weakness, but his humility and modesty for Allah subhanaw taala.
And so now our challenge, which is a very interesting challenge is that we now have to
resurrect the Islamic teachings
and bring it in line with the technology of the 20th century
and then bring that new dynamism again.
can be used in the 21st century. This is, I believe, one of our greatest challenges that we face. And if we are able to do this in sha Allah, that I believe strongly that we will have a definite alternative to these societies.
But that means we have to focus, I believe strongly in two areas. One is the area of education.
And secondly is the area of the family.
Because without families as the building blocks of society, there is no society
and without education, without people who are carrying that Islamic understanding and have the dynamism and the knowledge and capability, then we don't have direction.
So we need to focus on this for a long time. Muslims focus on the political aspects, the economic aspects. When you have a lecture in a community or a gathering, if you talk about a family, the family issues, then you only get maybe about five to 10% of the community comes out. And three quarters are sisters, be talking about the family, right?
If you're talking about education, in the past, they would also you'd only get 40% of the community. If you talk politics, this Jamaat against that Jamaat, this he mom did wrong, and the executive committee is going to get him. Everybody's out there, the place is crowded. They want the politics bring a hot political issue from the Muslim world, Islamic State,
Islamic State, overthrow the government, hot political issue, everybody comes out.
But when they went to one of the great scholars of Islam, Amazon Luca Mola, from Morocco, and they and they asked him about
Islamic State.
And he looked at people who were not even dealing with Islam. And he told me, he said, yet lagoonal fet Duna sruti. They are asking for the victory without fulfilling the conditions of the victory. You want Medina and you haven't gone through Mecca yet.
You want to have an Islamic State. But yet tawheed is not in your heart.
Your character is not developed yet.
And so the families is a crucial issue that we have to look at, and we have to not bury our heads in the sand. What we developed in Toronto, is Islamic social services. It's a new institution, where we do family counseling,
we deal with the issues. There's a problem between husband and wife, parents and children, teenagers are running away. Children's Aid Society is taking your child, let's deal with reality. Now. This is the basis of our community social services.
Those who are involved in social services have to have confidentiality. That means they have to keep the secrets of other Muslims. We have this bad tendency amongst us that we talk too much. We talk and especially people from the same nationality. I had people come in a person came in are from Bangladesh. And they said, Okay, I'll tell you my problem, but don't tell the Bengalis.
Okay, another person came from Egypt. And they said, Yes, I'll tell you but don't tell the Egyptians. Every country they say that they're afraid of their own people. Why? Because when people hear things they get on the phone, Oh, you know what happened to such and such and for land for land, and this and that and they're talking and then suddenly your business is all over? The leadership those in responsible positions have to have secrecy or
confidentiality they do not speak about people's secrets they do not carry minima, or begin a minima scandal.
Prophet peace be upon him said law yet. Hello, Jana Namaste
that the person who carries scandal will not enter Paradise that's serious. It's very serious. And so confidentiality
and also facing the issues head on and trying to give solutions that are Islamic, and also dealing with the best professional methodologies used in this part of the world, combining both worlds and so doctors, social workers, lawyers need to come together with Imams, community leaders and work together now to solve the family problems. And if it means you need a safe area, where an abused woman or an abused child can come to that area
and not feel threatened, that you need to have that
this is a crucial issue, we have to go at these problems and try to develop the kind of family where the home is a source of peace. The home is not a battleground.
It's that the home is a battleground, then how can we go out and spread peace in the land?
The second area, which I want to focus on a little bit more,
especially since we are here in education, we are involved in education. And I'm sure that some of the points that I'm going to mention here to you have already been discussed by you. This is not I don't believe that what I'm saying is something new. But I want to just give you some ideas that we have come across in our struggle in education in Canada in that area. And what I've seen over the years traveling in the communities, and this is making Islamic education relevant to the society we live in. How can these courses that we're doing become relevant, because we need to have that one of the problems we faced about our Sunday schools, our weekend schools, is that the children started to
get really bored.
And then everybody's memorizing Falcon, NASS and kulula had the reading the same Sierra story, and they come in sleep, you know, all during the class. And they they're bored, they want to stay home and watch cartoons, right?
This is what we face. This is not you, though. And no, that's not you. This is our community. They want to stay home and they want to watch cartoons. So we have to think about, you know, making Islamic education relevant. Also, we have to think about our goals, what are the goals that you're moving toward through your education? That's important when you set your curriculum, that you have something in mind as an as an objective? Where are you going with this? Number one,
we need to try to provide access to original sources of Islam, we have to begin to get our youth interested in going into original Arabic sources, that they can have a taste of the Arabic language, and they can begin to love the search of Arabic language. And that also means Arabic speaking people. That's what it also means. Because many of the Arabic speaking countries
in their street language, they are media, what we call patois here, it's very different than for some other Chaga olek all types of things. People are saying, you know what I'm talking about right? We're teaching must mooka some country they say it's just smoke
is smoke, a chimney smoke, and all these different things right for my smoker. Okay, now we want to teach classical Arabic. So even Arabic speaking person
can begin to get the taste of Quranic Arabic,
and then converse with others in this, through this knowledge, we can begin to get access to the original source that gives us access to the original sources. Secondly, and these are some broad objectives.
We need to separate Islam from culture.
Islam from culture, because many times what is transmitted to the student is not necessarily the principles of Islam, it is the cultural practice in a particular country.
And that means that the teacher has got to be very clear, be able to go to the sources themselves and make sure that they're not teaching cultural things.
This can come in prayer, this can come in, in general
dealings, character, and a lot of different areas.
The third area is that we need to go about reconstructing the Islamic personality, to reconstruct the Islamic personality. This is an all around personality. A person who is dunya and akhira, both combined, striving in this world, not of the world, not controlled by the world, but striving in this world toward the next life. Right? Not one extreme or the other extreme. And fourth, we need to develop Musa caffeine and Allah Ma. Now somebody who is moussaka that is a person who has the Kapha who has Islamic culture education, General Islamic education, people who take courses like the one I did in Medina Kalia to Tao Sula, Dean, who studied the soul of the deen become moussaka. It is not
an alum. an alum is somebody who brings you the sources who memorizes the whole Quran and can really bring this up. There are other people who are cultured people. And, and that is a goal that we need to shoot for here. That least we can produce students who are cultured in Islam. They have a taste
of Islamic Studies, they know how to access original sources. And they can translate the great works of the Allah and the scholars of the Muslim world into a relevant type of
practice for today. But also we need from the youngest students to project on making or developing or lemma. And that is people who will learn who memorize Quran before they're 10 years old, you know the system, memorize Quran before they're 10 years old, control the Arabic language, learn get into Hadith, right, start get into their studies, and then they go into Islamic education. Okay, we will have to produce in our next generation or the AMA. And I want to stress here, that the olema are not just men, that they're also women. And I say this because if you look at the snad Look, Mr. Chef, Mr. Malik, you look at many of the great scholars of Islam, you will find that there are women who
also taught them.
And we were studying a book of Sidi Ahmed Zook Rahim, Allah Fest, and one of the great scholars in Morocco. And within his his, his net, that, you know, one of his greatest teachers was his grandmother,
his grandmother, and he actually came up under her first before he went out
to the to actually go to other people. And so you'll find many great scholars like this, they're learning from their mothers, they're learning from their grandmother, knowledge is in their home. They're learning from a woman also, especially in their early years. And so this is important. And then again, the situation with the sisters themselves. What is happening now is that there are women in this society who want to hear about Islam.
And somebody's got to teach them
and sisters have to understand their rights. Just in the marriage area alone. How many sisters know about the the the rules of Kapha suitability? How do you make suitability between your young child or your teenager, young adult and another young adult to get married? What is suitability? How do you go into how many of us know even in divorce, and this divorce thing is playing as an activity? How many sisters know about Holla Holla. You know, they have the right to give back to Mom, how many know about
that the marriage can be unraveled. If the man does not fulfill certain
rights within the marriage, how many people don't know that.
They're stuck within marriage, like the practice of the Orthodox Jews.
And it comes out what we call Alamo alaka. where women are hung between marriage and divorce. And the husband says out, he leaves her and he said I will not divorce you until the day of judgment. I'll never divorce you. So you'll be hanging in between marriage you'll never get married again. That's not Islamic.
That's more aloka is not Islamic. And the Sharia has solutions to this. There's solutions but we don't know this.
The Maha the Dow Theory itself, how many knows the importance of the MA there was even one discussion in Shafi fit where they were talking about the Maha if there is a difference of opinion between the two families as to how much the Maha would be for the girl then you give the dowry or the Maha based upon the average dowry given to a woman in your area?
It is a difference of opinion, then you give the average dowry in your area. What is the average dowry given in Miami?
Does anybody know? Think about that? Does anybody know the average dollar? What's the average salary? Is it $5,000? Is it $20,000? Is the leather jacket and a pager? What is it?
What is the dollar?
We're not sure
these are the kind of areas that throughout education we need to go into to build our community
okay. So, therefore, we need to develop these type of leaders. Now, some of the relevant areas of emphasis, I want to just put out a few areas of emphasis that we can emphasize on in our
education. One is as I said before, developing a sound basis in classical Arabic.
And that is to nurture in the students the four skills, reading, writing comprehension, speaking, comprehension, meaning hearing and speaking, to develop these skills. And
right from the beginning, we need to try to develop in the students speaking are basic How are they can go on between the students, so
Using the Arabic even Madhava has Akita must mocha is me Abdullah must move is muhuali and they're talking like when I enter into enemy Bleecker in America and then the going on so they're using things if they know this when I enter enter, and admin America they're using that they know Joomla is Mia they know a noun sentence that can use a noun sentence, they didn't have to put the verb to be in that sentence. So they have learned the grammar rule if you try to teach them Joomla Izmir you frightened everybody out of the room
because Arabic grammar can seem intimidating, but if you start to use it, it's logical, it's logical language, English is illogical language gh T and pH and all these letters that you know are written and not pronounced. And you have to learn so many exceptions to the rules right? Arabic is very logical, but you got to learn the rules. Right once you know the rules, then you can get into the Arabic. So to emphasize the secondly, or Luma core and Well howdy that we start to learn the heirloom that we learn something about the Quran itself, in the sense of how when it was revealed, you know, what types of verses are there mechon Medina, Medina and verses you know, the aluminum
core and the tafsir starts to go into the taste of the Quran, right and then also into the Hadith that we start to go into the Hadith to get an idea give the students a feel of Hadith What is his net? How how this you know chain of narrators, what is a good Hadith and what is a weaker deed what is a strong it, give them a taste, so they can start to see how beautiful this aluminum Hadith really is. In looking at the Quran itself, again, we should be very sincere to it. We should have tahseen tilawat he is about a woman he was a dub board iottie that we should have we should have beautification of the reading of the Quran. You should read it with touch read right touch read what
they say. Right touch Riedel her roof will modify tool will poof
right touch Riedel her roof, that that you give the proper rights to the letters, and you know the stops, how to stop and stop, touch read, everybody needs to learn that. But also we need to learn that we have to follow it.
As many times we read the Quran, but we don't follow the verse we don't love the Quran. As a prophet peace be upon him said the time would come when people would be reading the Quran and melodious tones, and it wouldn't go past their throats.
Okay, wouldn't touch their hearts. And lastly, today, we need to reflect on the verses learn to reflect on the Quran and reflect on the meanings. The third area we need to focus on is a practical sessions or practical sessions in tawheed. And that is the oneness of Allah because that is the essence of Islam itself. And we need to focus in this society, that our essence is not just certain clothes that we wear. It's not just certain language or food that we eat. The essence of being Muslim is the one belief in one God. And we accept all the Prophets, and the Prophet Mohammed is of Islam as the last prophet. So this needs to be a practical to heat showing to heat amongst the
prophets, showing to heat in other nations, you can also show to heat then showing especially what they call to heat up a batter.
And that is the unity in worship, how tawheed plays itself out in your worship, not only just in salaat, but in your in your practice in your dealings with other people. And so he talks about it goes into even magic, superstition, all the different forms of shirk, that can come into the oma, this is one of our great problems now that's holding us back is that we're afraid of everything except Allah.
Afraid of the night afraid of genies coming inside of us, afraid of magicians putting spells on us, right? We're free to these things. You start talking about the jinn amongst people and everybody's eyes gets big.
Their eyes get big. He said yes. Last night, I saw the footprints. We were backwards. The feet were backwards and they're walking.
And I heard sounds outside. Something happened to me. I have a headache brother Abdullayev Eric.
He's stressed out he's got two jobs. He's a victim of stress, but he thinks the gin is inside of his head.
And so
to have that belief in Allah, and to have that feeling that connection with the Creator. The fourth point we would emphasize is a similar to number Ouija.
And especially what they would call fickle Syrah
The knowledge understanding of the theater, you don't just read it as a story, take knowledge from the different incidents that happen to the properties of slam and his followers. And
you can read see that even his heart, you can read a Shiva kasi ad, there's a number of works that you can read, where you will find siara being expressed in a way where you can get something out of it. Okay, this brings alive Islamic teachings. Theater is important. And we use this as one of our main subjects for the students. And that is because the young people here, especially those who watch television a lot, and that's just about everybody, there used to watching stories, everything is a story. The hero is there and his family is blown up by this wicked guy. And now he's going to go get him
he's got to get to evil. aliens have just landed over there. And so they see a story. And then it comes to a conclusion. And and some of the some of these stories even teach them something, unfortunately, that teaching them the wrong ideas. But they'll teach them something with that story. When you tell the some of the stories of the properties of the slab. It's not just a story. It teaches something that we can learn from. If you go deep into it, you'll teach us Tafseer It teaches it can teach Hadith, everything can be inside of the Sierra. Also, you can also you can teach what is called the stories of Sahaba while the Allahu anhu. And there is a work by Abdul Wahid Mohamad,
which is an English called companions of the Prophet. If you can't go to the Arabic sources, you can go to companions of the Prophet, and there's female also companions to hobby yet, and these are practical stories. And when the when the children hear this, then you know they This is an example of somebody who did something, then you can go through Islamic history and you can look at different individuals in Islamic history and you can follow their lives todich had been Ziad selaginella, you be many different people throughout history, you can see they're examples, right up right up into recent times. And and these can be used. Number six is basic, thick,
basic, thick, simple, practical, thick, so the students can begin to to to taste what phip is, and to know how to make their prayers properly, to harder, and all these different aspects in a simple way. But I want to stress that we need to have tolerance between schools of thought there's a problem happening in some parts of America, where people are now
you know, getting themselves fortified around schools of thought, I am a Hanafi I am a Shafi I am a Maliki and in some cases they you know, they look at each other you Shafi. You know some people said Well, I mean they came to me they said Cara Hanafi Marissa Shafi
right as though it's like two different religions. Okay, they're fortifying themselves. Yes, you need to have a school of thought as the basis of your thick, but not to be intolerant. There's another new wave that says no school of thoughts.
Don't have any school of thought, don't go to any other scholars. That's another extreme position. This extremism
because you cannot negate the great scholars of Islam. Okay, at the same time, you have to go back to the scholars themselves and see how tolerant they were of each other. How they are the love of the sources, made them love the other scholars, they will teach us and students of Egypt they will not rivals making different churches, like Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals and Baptists. This is a different concept which is alien to us. The seventh point
is that okay also in fact, halal and haram. That we need to have general courses in halal and haram so the students have a practical application of halal and haram in their life. Number seven is the Sunnah in a HELOC character and Mama lot.
Okay, that we have emphasized for a long time about that.
How to Pray how to fast but we need to emphasize now, character and dealings, interpersonal relationships, well, I'm a lot and there's a whole body of Sunda in this area, how you deal with people, how you address people, your respect for each other, respect for children for adults, adults for children, men for women, modesty, how you deal, Mama, you know how you do business is a lot of different areas of the sunlight. In this this field, eight knowledge of the environment physical warfare.
And in that you need to have a general history of your know from looking at history from an Islamic perspective. Also, we need to look at the history of this part of the world to get a general idea with Islamic perspective.
What is the history of Muslims in this part of the world, that's an interesting subject. Because you might not know there might have been Muslims right here in the same place, when there was no University in a little Masjid. And they tried for 50 years, and then they went, they got lost, you need to know about them, so you don't fall in the same trap that they fell into. Now, coming to a conclusion, some of the sub supplementary aspects of Islamic education, one is as much as possible, we need an Islamic setting.
You need to have an Islamic setting. And you need to try to set things around, you know, to start to appreciate some of the Islamic you know, even in designs and clothing, in your food, you know, and whatnot, you need to go into your culture, you know, our children are in great need of culture. Because our culture now is becoming the de jallet culture of the West. Even in Mecca, Medina, they have Pizza Hut, McDonald's, you know, it's all over the place. So we need to get them to appreciate other parts of Islam. You know, in many Muslim countries for a hobby, Muslims used to do calligraphy hut
and they learn how to do the cut very beautiful. Now is basketball. Right? Baseball, okay, it's good for, you know, athletic, right. But if that's your main hobby in life, you want to be Michael Jordan, you got a problem.
There's only one of the billion are going to be like Michael Jordan, in this society. And a Muslim is not going to be able to do all the all the things that he had to do to get that money. Because we have limits.
Okay, and so hobbies, Islamic hobbies, okay, this is important thing, culture, even making pottery.
Okay, designing things the Muslims used to design, go to some of the Muslim countries go to Syria, go to our border, new in eastern part of Nigeria, go to Morocco, go to some parts of Pakistan and look, even in the furniture. There's Islamic design, and the clothing, there's Islamic design. We had this before we had a taste for Islam, where our Islam appeared and everything that we were doing, even in food that is given out to you. Even you know, we used to have these these little ritual things that they might seem trivial, but even serving tea and coffee to each other. How do you serve a guest? and serve coffee to your guests? And t? Somebody comes to your house in Miami?
And they're sitting down? Okay, what do they need? Especially if they come from Canada, they need a drink of water. Get them some water.
Right? So you shouldn't even say anything. You should be bringing water.
That's Islamic Adam, what are our children know? Somebody comes in you sit down, turn on the TV. He's dying. He's thirsty. And suddenly he says, Can I have a drink of water brother?
And then just Oh, yeah, yeah, there's a guest here. Because the TV captured you, right?
But the etiquette of Islam now deals with your guests. You know, see his health, see what he needs or she needs. Take care of them. Right? These are little things, but this is our culture. That's what spread Islam.
That's why Islam spread across the Niger River and into hausa land and all the areas. That's why it's spreaded Indonesia. That's why Indonesia is the largest Muslim country. It was merchants that went to Indonesia.
In India itself, the Hindus were influenced by Muslims.
All throughout the world, it is really the merchants and the scholars, and the people of character who spread Islam.
The next point is we need practical recreation.
We need to have a long in our classes. We even took a period of time in our Sunday school classes. To showing you our example. We would teach Sierra, we would teach some Quran. We would teach some Hadith. And then we had wrestling class wrestling. So you separate the boys and you separate the girls. Okay, and the girls, the boys would do wrestling. And we get a Muslim brother who's good in wrestling or good in martial arts and he teaches them so they have sports, right? That's what they love
the girls to need sports. Some people say well, wait a minute. No, the girls need sports to you look at the Sahaba yet read about the Battle of the trench and read about Muslim women. You see, they will they fought also.
They knew how to fight.
They live the tough life. Also. In Toronto, we had a rapist who was targeting Muslim women.
Only Muslim woman he loved and so we started window classes, which is women's self defense. And a woman comes in and she teaches the sisters they can still wear loose clothing and she teaches them how
To defend themselves if a rapist comes, how you defend yourself what you do. And even at the end of the course, the system broke the board
and said, sister, Xena broke the board in May 22 1998. And some sisters, as you may have heard before I said this, some sisters put it over there bit in that bedroom. So next time they got into an argument with their husband, he looked at the board
and he said, Mashallah, to Vatican.
Well, I'm going to whom should avena whom we will solve our problem in mutual consultation. Right? He looked at the board, that's Zeynep. Right. So practical, recreation,
riding, horse riding.
Take them sometimes for horse riding. I saw a store here in Miami, where they were selling saddles and whatnot, go outside of the city of Miami, and you find some people you know, they're fishing, the horse riding, they're hunting, take the Muslims hunting.
These are skills right? Swimming,
let them swim, even the sisters you can get an area, get a beach area or something and let the sisters be in an area, they can still wear you know, some parts of their clothing have to wear the clothing with the other people. And they can go inside that area brothers protect the area and let them swim. What we did is that we even work with the with the City of Toronto, and we got pools, swimming pools, and we had only women in the pools, only Muslim sisters and we've had some sisters who learned from women, they took lifeguard courses.
So the Muslim sisters were in the pool, and they were able to swim in the pools and they learned to swim. These are some practical points that we need to have to supplement our education. Number three is I said skills training. And that can include
carpentry, agriculture, Home Economics and so forth and so on.
So, I want to leave you with these points. And you know, it is a challenge that we have in front of us. But really,
in this coming period that the you know in this time, which is which is coming on so rapidly. We need to have the type of leadership that can handle the challenges of the 21st century. It is that leadership in summary, which has proper knowledge of Islam, and has taqwa
also leadership that has balance and wisdom, balance, hikma wisdom. Three, they have Islamic character
for courage and conviction, five, a knowledge of the environment. Six emphasis on unity and cooperation with others. Unity type of leadership that emphasizes unity and cooperation and seven a positive approach as a prophet peace upon him used to say to his followers, when he would send them out. Yes, you were allowed to ask. But Shirou will add to nutfield make things easy, don't make it difficult. Call them to what's good. Call them to stop. Don't drive people away. May Allah subhanaw taala help us in the coming of the 21st century. And may Allah develop the type of
Muslim homes and Islamic education that we need to present a dynamic system for not only for the Muslim world, but for the whole of the planet Earth. akula Polly Heather was stopped for lolly walakum wa salaamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Yeah, sure.
How involved the parents are in your school.
Feel so?
negative towards Islamic education? Right? Okay, number one in terms of parental involvement in the Sunday school classes, the weekend schools, we had developed classes for the parents themselves, which were parallel to the classes for the students, which you may be doing yourself. And so there was existence classes, there was brothers classes, we even had some which were joint a joint class for adults. And it was a subject that they could relate to. So while the children are being educated, the parents are also being educated. Because the problem is that the children start learning things and the parents don't learn it develops a problem, because when they go home, they
see the opposite.
So develops a problem. So the parents need to be educated, and then also to have periodic meetings with the parents, where you discuss the policy of the school. if they have any criticisms suggestions, they have input. They have direct input into what goes on in the school, periodic meeting.
Things that they would know, they receive a communique. And they know that, you know, this time of year, they would be the parent teachers meeting in the biggest schools that we have there, they knew they even form a parent Teachers Association. So this would be the Muslim parents of the children in the big schools. So this is like a full time school. So they would have a parents group that works along with the administration, not against the administration, they work with the administration to solve the problems, and the administration should look upon the parents as a very important part of their leadership, you should realize that because these are the parents of the children. And that's
very important in terms of, you know, the the negativity with Islamic education, as I said, at the beginning of the talk, you know, in the Muslim world, people are coming out of the colonial period. And during that period, Islamic education was looked upon as inferior education. Even though people are religious, they were religious. But still, they looked upon deepest Islamic education as not relevant to technology and the changes in society. And in some ways, it wasn't relevant. Because it didn't deal with the science. It went away from science. So some scholars even said that the earth is flat, up until the 80s. Big scholars is that the earth is flat. They said, nobody went out in
space, they're liars, they cut that up.
Okay, so when when people who are involved in technology heard that they say these people are ignorant.
And so a gap developed between the professional people who are educated in the secular system, and the people who are educated in the Islamic education system, so that that developed, now that gap is closing,
and people are coming together. But it will take some time, because there's a lot of misunderstanding. And also, there needs to be the type of wisdom in leadership that can deal with both worlds. It can deal with both worlds, but it's coming together, but it will take some time. Okay, also people from America, we're accepting Islam,
you know, did not have the benefit of knowing how deep Islamic education really is. Because many of the early movements for Islam in North America, were founded by people, and I'm not blaming them, they did their best, but they invented the religion. They invented the religion. So they even sometimes claimed Prophethood. And they invented how to pray, how to fast how to do everything, without going to the sources. Now they were trying to survive, right, but they thought it up themselves. And that's not the way Islam has been transmitted. There is creativity, but it's revelation, you got to learn the revelation.
Okay, and that was last, that people didn't, America didn't have that understanding of how important the revelation is. Now, it's here. Now, it's widespread now. And so people are now realizing the importance of learning classical Arabic, and going to the revolution,
just to add on to the system, and we do understand that all the stakeholders are
involved. And we do have the classes for the others. But the problem is how to motivate the parents to bring them away.
And that's the major problem we are facing right over here.
Well, you know, to be honest with you, brother, I don't claim to have the answer to this.
Because even in our own area, somehow the parents are not motivated. Enough, they don't realize the seriousness of it. Because in many cases, they want to they, you know, they think that their main thing in life is working, or just cooking food and you know, what not and you know, and these are important aspects of life, obviously, but the Islamic education is crucial.
Because why are you cooking the food? How do you cook it? You got to know Hello?
Right? How do you earn your money?
You got to know how Alan haraam.
See, so so these are important things, but how to motivate people.
Again, if you have some diversified type of, you know, classes, interesting topics, you know, maybe you can get people out, you know, like that. And with the youth recreation to active active sports type things that can get the youth out to a lot of the programs. But really, this is a general problem within our community. Man, I think unfortunately, they're going to be motivated by by the American society. Because you know, this society is going through some big changes. And so people are going to realize Islam is a survival kit. It's a survival kit. And that's why there's more people coming.
But as you said, they bring over here when they go to the shopping center
and whenever we form the foundation,
people will react to one
from instead of having
Yeah, except for the one who has the President of the PTA, the rest? We were not elected as the president of the PTA. Yeah, well, no, the major challenge, it's a challenge. But you know, you have to try to continue, because it is an unnecessary element. Try somehow, you know, if you get a speaker to come in, you know, Dr. Masako comes or whoever comes, you have a session with him with the parents.
And so they might come to listen to him. If you have somebody like that in and then send a flyer home to the parents. So this is your session, now, you have somebody who's going to talk to you like something like that some ways of motivating them to come up. Okay, the floor is open again. Anybody else? Yes. But
sometimes,
this may
also make
sure exactly what we are facing.
So
this is where balanced is required. And this is not easy. Because many of us when we think of Islamic education from the Muslim world, you think of the US, ah, he doesn't know the thing and you beat him. He doesn't know it beat him. That's what a lot of the Quran schools were, you'll know your lesson, they beaten you every five minutes, they beaten you. Okay, and they train students to terror.
Then on the other hand, you have people who are super liberal, and they allow the students do anything. And some of these public schools I don't know about here in Miami, but it can't, it got so bad that carrying weapons in class, they were all these strange clothes to school, and they're walking around, no respect for the teachers. It Like It went the opposite direction. So now we need balance. We need balance, you know, and this again, is it requires some creativity, or you know, like, flexibility is not easy. But it is to the administration needs to be strict, and needs to be disciplined. There's got to be added and an etiquette and respect. If you don't have etiquette, you
don't have respect, you're finished. The children have to learn respect. At the same time. There's got to be love. It's got to be motivated out of sincerity and love and care. Not like terror, not terrorism.
And that's that's not an easy thing to to reach. That's got to be a combination and a balance of the two.
Okay, any other questions? Any sisters have
motivation for her? Yeah, it doesn't work with very young children. But the motivation came from my son, who was flatly said, if you're not going to come along with me with the glasses, I'm not going to go. That's right. So here I am. I'm coming every Sunday because
motivation can come from children.
Simply that he will not go.
Yeah.
You mentioned information, going back to sources is 15 different books and everything. You think nowadays we have a CD ROM that me as a Muslim, I have a question about marriage. I type it in. I have the sources right there. I mean, is there something out there? I don't see that out there that maybe? I mean, do you have a subject matter? That's the way you do research? Well, you know, there are CD ROMs, which are being developed now, here that that bring, you know, a lot of discussions in it. But you know, Islamic education, like any serious discipline, requires people who are educated properly. For instance, you know, if you wanted to have an answer to brain surgery, you know, and
you have a CD ROM, that that tells you which part of the brain to operate on. If you don't know medicine, they're talking Chinese to you. It's a language you do not understand what the talking about. So therefore, there are CD ROMs, but you have to learn how to use that, that knowledge, you have to learn, you know, you have to go to the school, the foundations and the fundamentals of the subjects in order to appreciate the subject itself. Because sometimes when a person makes a fatwa It is based upon a whole foundation of information, why they come to that decision, you know, that that they've come to
you mentioned, right, taking the average.
The subject, you can have all this information that they're working on, you know, and there are books, you know, like Asana, which is translated to English. There are books like that, that have tried to bring together the information for you.
And
tours, right well, I don't have full knowledge in that area itself
was one called the
you
said, you know, the whole syllabus issue talking about I think we are working on the same language
that definitely has to do with
the personality.
As you see, most of our students come from the Pakistanis. Right.
And as we I was educated, you know, go ahead with the you understand, please
complete the Quran so that we can have a big function, right? And tell everybody the challenges
that we cannot accomplish at Sunday school. And that the major problem with the
use of attitude for two years, five years, and you still he or she has not completed?
And how you answer that that's not our focus. Right? Well, you know, people again, we have to separate Islam from culture.
And some of the things that that we did in Muslim countries were actually cultural practices. And because, you know, in Arabic speaking countries,
to read the Quran like that, with no understanding, people don't do that, because they speak Arabic. So that's sort of a cultural thing. And so some people will just read through the Quran itself, and just read it, and then they finished and they do the Hutton, you know, whatever. And then Mashallah, and you know, and that's it. But today, you need the knowledge of what's in the Quran as a survival kit to use it. Now, this does not take away from Tajweed tahseen tilava t, everybody should learn Tajweed This is crucial, and should be part of the curriculum, what can be provided, what some people do is that in you, and these Sunday schools, we don't have enough time to cover everything,
what they do is they have after Asa, they have a teacher, they hire Quran teacher, and every day or every other day, or twice a week after
a different time than the big class, that teacher reads Quran with them.
So the ones who want to do that, they can have the athlete after classes, you know, where they'll read through the whole Quran with a teacher, because those teachers need to have total focus on what they're doing. They can't they're not teaching all these other subjects. But when we're in a greater community, there's other needs. There are other cultures other needs. So those who have that need what we have done, you hire a Quran teacher, and then at a different time, you go specifically for that Quranic reading, you come to the general class, for your general Islamic Studies and your knowledge, then that way, maybe you can overcome.
Yeah.
Well, I'm in Toronto is different this full time and this Sunday classes. Also, some Unfortunately, because of the size of our community, that's probably the same here, some people cannot afford to go to the full time school, or they're too far away, we don't have enough schools. So the ones who can't afford it, then would send their children to school like in some masters have Quran class after us. So they go after awesome. And on the weekends, they'll have a Saturday or Sunday class, where they get together like that to do to fill in. But really, we should all be striving toward full time Islamic education. There's no way around this. And as the American public schools get
worse and worse, we will realize there's no way out. But to put our children in full time Islamic schools, where they get a good academic education to where they learn the math, they learn the science, they learn English, but the same time they're in Islamic environment, peer group is Islamic. Right, and then they'll learn some Islamic Studies at the same time. And hopefully, eventually, you'll become integrated completely, where it's a it's a really,
totally Islamic type of education.
The whole community, we have
a community and they all
come out. And we're thinking this is going to be empty, you know, building loss everywhere, and
coming up, and then we have a problem with if someone gets involved in doing a particular thing, you know, helping others who are sit back and say, oh, let them do it. You know, that that is a problem. And really, the masjids have to become practical centers. You know, we have a tendency to want to build Muslims. We have many beautiful masters in the Muslim world, the Blue Mosque in Malaysia, martial arts are so many, you know, Masters in Cairo and so we want to build something like you know, I'm open to awesome Kairos some huge giant monster we want to build. And that's not practical for the situation we're in. And when you go back to the time of the Prophet
Islam is the master was small,
you could bang your head on the ceiling if you were a little tall. It's a practical small building. So, you know, complex that has Masjid school, also, recreation facilities, gymnasium, should be attached to the masjid
then the youth will come to play basketball, or to play soccer, and other things, and then they can mix a lot when it's time for slot. So, you know, we have to be very practical, you know, when we're looking at the new structures now. And there are many engineers, now Muslim engineers, who have developed very good patents, good, you know, ways of simple Islamic architecture
where you can get a practical building that doesn't have a big khobar dome on it, a giant minaret
but can have basic Islamic design, and a practical functional building. And the activities have to be very practical ones, you know, that that that the students and the parents can be involved in. Okay, any other questions anybody has? Before we close? Yes.
Yes, there's a lot of information on the internet. Now. However, you have to be able to distinguish between those good things and those bad things. Unfortunately, from my experience with the internet, the shaytaan is really powerful in the internet man. And there's even some people that are so wicked, that they put Islam, you know, on their website, and they're actually talking against Islam.
So you have to find the good websites, you know, that that Muslims have checked for, you know, that you can go into them, so you won't get one of these devilish type of things. Because because there's no control over this, you know, the NEC itself, they can't control it. So, you know, yes, you can get information but try to get good websites. And some of the brothers are here from the MSA of MSL, you they can give you some good websites in Sharla that you can access. Okay.
Yes, yes.
This question about funding. And something that you mentioned earlier that some Muslim family could not afford to send their kids
who don't have enough schools,
and going with the idea of separation of religion and
any attempt to build some schools,
some, some some mission
that could accomplish both. And therefore, to qualify for government funding in the state last three, four years, it's a big boon upon charter schools, but they do not fund religious schools, some saying, for the community, like yours, and probably the laws are similar has been any offense?
Well, you know, that there has been attempts, even some groups have acts like the Islamic Society of North America, they have actually taken over school buildings that were deserted, they took over the buildings. And that solves a lot of problems, because the whole building is set up in such a way that it can be passed by the Board of Education. And they even put their curriculum next to the board's curriculum. And then that way, they, you know, you're able to get some funding. The problem is, though, sometimes, you know, and this is based on where you live, sometimes the local people have some conditions they put on you, you know, that are very difficult to, to, you know, to do a
good Islamic education. But if you have people who are involved in education, you have teachers who know the Board of Education, and then they can work along with the community, you know, to really help you, you know, to get the local funding, each area is a little bit different, though.
You know, and some people have tried to do Darla looms, they get an area and they set up a madressa.
Unfortunately, sometimes they transport something right out of India, or another part of the Muslim world, and they put it right down as though you're right in your urine, India, you know, and that sometimes doesn't help because it doesn't, it's not relevant, it's good for memorizing Quran.
But then it's not relevant when you come out of the school to the society itself. So really, some attempts have been made, and probably the Islamic Society of North America, they have one of the broadest space school systems. Recently, by the use of Islam. There was a meeting with brother Yusuf Islam, and Abdullah Idris and a few other people, some two teachers from South Africa and our brother, Bilbao Phillips, Abu Amina, and myself, we were in Toronto and we met about Islamic education. So what they're trying to do now is to revitalize the schools everywhere and set new curriculums and to unite
The curriculums, there's a move being made, you know, like that. And then even to to make it up to the standards of the state, wherever they are, that's a move being made.
And Troy, and I met two principal,
Muslims,
they qualify for charter schools, can they teach you basically a
few subjects?
Arabic was was thought was cool. And some basic religion, you know, they say religious teachings, you know, that being specific. And that way the
Detroit has a very large Muslim population, over a million Muslims in the metropolitan Detroit area. And so they have, they have political power. And so they're able to get this Yemenis communities and Lebanese communities have been there for like 5060 100 years. So they have the power to be able to, you know, get certain assistance from the state and whatnot. Eventually here, Muslims unite, we can unite, we can also get some benefits from the taxes that we pay every day.
If I can educate my children
I call
the private tutor.
What do you think?
Well, to the importance of the Sunday school, is that
Islam is a way of life. And so therefore, it's not just information given there. There's, there's peer pressure, and there's also interaction with other Muslims. That's part of our Islam. Because if you learn, if somebody says to you, you're supposed to be generous, you're supposed to cooperate. What's our new eligibility with taqwa? How do you do to our if you don't have anybody to cooperate with, you'll never learn how to share? You see what I'm saying? But when you're here, you interact with each other. How do you learn to lower the gaze? How do you learn to be modest, even sometimes you learn how to dress, you learn things from seeing other Muslims. Also, it's important for the
young people, their identity,
their identity, who are you,
if we don't enforce in them, you're a Muslim. And this is a group of Muslims, that's your community, then they start seeing themselves as somebody else. And when you watch television too much, you start seeing yourself like somebody on television, then you got a real problem.
So therefore, the you know, the Society of Muslims, interaction with the society Muslim is a very important element of education, because Islamic education is living education. It's not just information.
Right? It's information and practice, and especially the character we emphasize in these times the character muamalat the interrelationship between people, and our group as a society. So I want to end at this point, and I pray that you know, you will be successful in your striving here in your school, and then a law would bring us all together in unity and protect us from the fitna of the 21st century. akula Kali how that was stopped for lolly walakum wa salaamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh